Invictus

by Ryan Graudin

From the author of the Carnegie Medal nominated Wolf by Wolf, comes an epic new story - A fast-paced, heart-stopping journey through time that will leave you breathless.

Time is running out . . .

Farway McCarthy was born outside of time. With nowhere to call home and nothing to anchor him to the present, Far captains a crew on a dangerous mission into the past.

When he collides with Eliot - a mysterious, secretive girl, whose very appearance raises questions about time itself - Far immediately distrusts her.

But he must take a leap of faith, following Eliot on a race against time, if he is to protect everything he's ever loved from disappearing forever . . .

• ISBN10: 0316503134
• ISBN13: 9780316503136
• Publish Date: 26 September 2017 (first published 19 September 2017)
• Publish Status: Active
• Imprint: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
• Format: eBook
• Pages: 464
• Language: English

Reviews

[tweetybugshouse]

First, read for 2021 a time traveling YA science-fiction novel. This book fulfills two challenges for me this year in my book reading life. It is my oldest backlog NetGalley title, and two I was able to borrow as an audiobook, so I got my first audiobook read for the year. There is action, adventure, mystery, and a tiny bit of romance, which took a nice backseat in the plot.

Far is intriguing, and I was hooked when we discover he does not have a birthdate at the very start of the novel. Far is protective of those who are part of his crew on the Invictus. The other members are just as impressive as Far. Gram logical, Priya is passionate, Immogen is sweet, and Elliot the wildcard.

New to me author, but I think I need to check out more of his novels in the future. If you are a lover of mystery time travelers, this might be your cup of tea.

[limabean74]

Just not for me. Really wasn’t connecting with the characters and wasn’t a fan of the romance. Story would have been awesome if I could have connected. Oh well, I tried.

[sa090]

It’s been a long while since I read a science fiction book, and I don’t think I read one like this book this year just yet.

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Time travel can be a very messy thing to try and incorporate into a story, depending on how in-depth and more importantly, how thorough you want to be in your explanations of the mechanics. In this book Ryan Graudin gives us a world that has already discovered time machines, so in turn we’re given the results of the discovery and an outlook on what they have already worked out instead of getting into way too much technical details of how these machines are built and operated. That in itself can be a double edged sword. For instance, if I’m prioritizing the events of the story + trying to make a more accessible world for my readers, this approach would work out pretty well given that too much technicalities might be a turn off for some. However, this approach also makes those who are crazy for details feel like it’s too light on them.

In this book, for me at least, Ryan Graudin managed to avoid potential outrage by how she made the time machine a secondary thing in the story and prioritized other things that didn’t need as many explanations. When the protagonists are basically preforming heists and using the time machine as a means of transportation, it made me think of it as a some sort of vehicle instead of this very advanced piece of technology so the information she provided about the operations and the mechanics was sufficient for this piece of writing. Moreover, her own way writing of very fast paced action, fast paced events and adding twists here and there makes it very easy to just get sucked into the story without minding that minor detail. Of course, she does provide information, but since I love tiny tiny details, I’m glad that I wasn’t bothered when she didn’t answer all my questions about it.

The fast pace she incorporated into the story would’ve probably worked better if we are taking this standalone book as a series, I mean it works for what she was going for but when everything is going way too fast, it’s not so easy to see how skilled the team is or how they’re really planning their heists. Moreover, it makes it a little difficult to get a real grasp of the places they’re visiting because they’re spending so little time appreciating them and spending more time trying to accomplish the goals in the already small time frame allocated for the missions. This would’ve also bothered me to a much bigger degree, if she didn’t keep adding her twists. Whenever I discover something new, it makes it have more sense as to why she’s doing it this way than not.

The characters themselves were interesting, my favourite would be Imogen for how coluorful she was in this book. Easily the friend who takes everything by storm and makes your head spin trying to make sense of it. Compared to the rest of the crew, she was a bit of a breath of fresh air. It’s not that they were suffocating, but they felt like they were trying to fit into certain molds I’ve seen many many times while she just operated according to her own wavelength and everyone had to get on it. I think given how this book went, the main thing I disliked about the book was the romance. It felt like it was added because this is a YA and not because it was needed or made the book better. Thankfully we skipped some of the annoying tropes in it but yeah, wasn’t a fan.

I didn’t know that the book was a standalone until about half way through it, I mean with the way most of it went, it was either a duology or a standalone but I’m glad that it was a standalone because I really miss reading those. I do want to read more similar books tbh, heists being the center point of it, not necessarily through time. Might be finally time to put Six of Crows on the monthly TBR :)

Final rating: 3.5/5

[cornerfolds]

Read more of my reviews at Cornerfolds.com!

*Review to come!*

[Terri M. LeBlanc]

 
I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.This review is brought to you courtesy of Ryan Graudin, Erin Lindsay McCabe and @HistoricalFix.

In early 2016, I joined the team at Author Accelerator. One of our book coaches and USA Today bestseller, Erin Lindsay McCabe, picked up on the fact that I love historical fiction books. She invited me to the upcoming @HistoricalFix chat on Twitter. I joined the chat and was connecting with the authors, when Ryan Graudin, one of the guest authors on the chat that month, said something about her next book that caught my eye and it lead to a flurry of tweets.

https://twitter.com/ryangraudin/status/857040799456014336

…and then she said this…

https://twitter.com/ryangraudin/status/857041071305625600

And I zoomed right over to NetGalley to find and request Invictus.

I DEVOURED Invictus. It delivered exactly what Ryan promised in April–a fun romp through time and space ala Firefly and Doctor Who. At one point, I checked my reading progress and noticed I was 50% complete and I was devastated! I wanted the story to keep going. I had become so attached to the entire crew of the Invictus that I didn’t want to let them go, but I also wasn’t able to force myself to read slower.

Invictus grabs you right from the beginning. It’s a love story—a forbidden love kind of story. [swoons] The kind of love the results in “The Boy Who Should Not Have Been” (the title of the first chapter) which leads to, at first, minor technical issues and gradually become rip-in-time-and-space-funky-crack-in-the-wall issues. Paradoxes of a sort that take elements from Back to the Future and Futurama and stir them up into a time travel-parallel universe kind of smoothie.

Invictus is littered with colorful characters. Farway is the swoon-worthy cad who grows a bit as the story progresses. His crew is filled with smart talented folks who have their own hang-ups that provide some lightness and laughter to the story. Imogen’s humorous ship logs provide some additional insight into the crew and give some added facts about them like Imogen’s hair color and Gram’s Tetris high score. The crew even has a furry tagalong, a red panda name Saffron, which seems an unusual pet, but appears to be part cat-part-dog-part-raccoon.

The time travel-parallel universe elements Invictus are easy to navigate. It’s helpful that the jumps through time are explained by the crew so there isn’t that time travel confusion and jumble that sometimes happen where you glaze over and just go with it.

What’s best about Invictus is the balance between the serious moments, the heartfelt moments and the lighthearted moments. The story is never too dark or too funny. While the physical and emotional journey for Farway and the crew is never smooth, the reading journey goes so smoothly that it’s over, sadly, too quickly leaving you craving more time and more pages in to steal through time acquiring unusual objects in a stolen time machine with a fun-loving, outgoing crew.

A version of this review also appeared in The Gazette print edition on December 31, 2017.
This review was originally posted on Second Run Reviews

[chymerra]

I am a huge fan of sci-fiction and I love space opera. Add in the fact that it is young adult and I was very excited to start reading Invictus. So I was a little surprised and disappointed when I couldn’t get into the book until about midway through. I know that it is because I felt that the book crept until about midway. It was after Eliot revealed everything that I felt the book picked up steam and I actually got into reading it.

I thought the plot of the book was good. Time travel has been discovered and is being used. People can go back in time to sight see. Then there are the people who go back in time to record the events live for the people in the future to study. This is where Farway’s story starts. His mother, Empra, is a Recorder and she has done the unthinkable. She has fallen in love with a gladiator named Gaius and has gotten pregnant. After witnessing a fight in which Gaius dies, Empra goes into labor. She delivers Farway on her ship in a place called the Grid. Which is outside of time. So, a great start to the book. It fell flat and I had a very hard time keeping my attention on it until Eliot dropped a bombshell on Farway and his crew. Then the book picked up steam and I couldn’t put it down until it ended.

I do think that Invictus was a great space opera. It fills in that genre very well. The time travel was written wonderfully and I thought that it was a very different take on that. I thought the usage of camaflouged ships was great. But I didn’t care for the YA part of it.

Farway got on my nerves from page one but I liked him. I thought that he was very immature. That part of him grated on my nerves. I did think that he was a good captain and he did put his crew first. He also had good instincts about people. I mean, he was right about Eliot. But in the end, he was willing to do whatever he could to save his mother and his world.

Eliot had some brass ones, let me tell you. She stole the book that Farway trying to find on the Titanic. She then used it as a bargaining chip to get aboard the Invictus. I was surprised as Farway and his crew about not only who Eliot was by why she was there.

Surprisingly, for a YA book, there is sex. Farway and Priya have sex a few times. The book doesn’t get into details but you definitely know what they were doing. The romance between Priya and Farway was sweet and very heartfelt. I had tears in my eyes during the scene where Priya…..well, you need to read the book.

The end of the book was very heartfelt and I got a little emotional during it. Not going to say anything but I did like how the storylines were resolved.

3 stars

My Summary of Invictus:

Invictus didn’t hold my attention as it should have. The first half of the book seemed to drag and only picked up speed after a crucial scene in the middle of the book. I did think that it was wonderfully written with rich dialogue between the characters. I am disappointed that I just didn’t like it as much as I should have.

[Ashley]

Liked:

- Interesting characters.

- The historical parts were really cool. Gladiators, titanic, etc.

- I loved the time travelling, and that's actually coming from someone who can be a bit iffy about time travel books. It was a perfect balance of interesting time travel mind-fuckery, but still being easy to grasp. Sometimes time travel can be SO confusing that it's no longer even fun to read about because I'm so lost... that wasn't the case here. It was a cool idea but also easy to understand what was happening and how actions affected the future.

---

Ehh:

- The main character, Far, is already in a relationship with one of the other crew members when the book started. The romance wasn't the total focus of the story but it still played a significant part. It was hard for me to be really invested in it though because it was already in full swing when the book started. I just wasn't hugely attached to it and that was kind of a bummer.

- The technology was kind of weird/confusing. For example, there's a bunch of math that needs to be done to time travel and here's a quote:

"The numbers weren't just changing this time. They were disappearing."

That just made no sense to me. I didn't really get the whole numbers changing/disappearing thing. How does that even happen with math? I just really, really didn't get how that whole part worked.

- There were a few slow parts - particularly in the middle. But it really sped up again at the end!

[Stephanie]

Mild-spoilers ahead:

This one was hard to rate because I both liked it and didn't like it. After reading Wolf by Wolf and Blood for Blood, I was hooked and ready to read anything Ryan Graudin writes. While the premise for this book hit all my checkboxes, something didn't click while reading. The plot takes a long time to kick in (nearly halfway), and there is a year jump early on that readers are supposed to take in stride -- we are semi-introduced to a bustling crew and relationships that were built during that year, without explanation until much later. I felt like the romance between Far and Priya would have been nice to build upon instead of just telling me they were dating. Gram and Imogen were great characters, but I wanted more as characters rather than just pushing them together (everyone does NOT need to pair off.)

Long story, short: I wanted to like this more than I did, but I didn't hate it. It's just not as good as Graudin's alt-history. At least this is a stand-alone!

[nightingalereads]

This book was a solid read. The story was well-thought out, entertaining, and you can tell Ryan Graudin did her research when it came to the time-traveling. Unfortunately, I just couldn't connect with the characters and the story as much as I did with her Wolf By Wolf duology. The characters did not hold my emotions prisoner, which is what I really look for in a favorite book.

Despite my lack of enthusiasm, this story was well-written and well-executed. And I know from her previous books that Ryan is a phenomenal writer. I may just be in a reading slump and will need to pick up this story again once it's released.